Re: Open Letter: Why I, Kevin Kofler, am not rerunning for FESCo

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On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 1:04 AM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Sir Gallantmon (ニール・ゴンパ) wrote:
> Though, there are some instances where the prevailing opinion should be
> ignored, when there is no solid evidence to back it up, e.g. Mono and the
> like.

Indeed, I also think defending freedom is important (and it was part of my
campaign). But I've also been unhappy with FESCo's decisions in that domain,
e.g.:
* libvdpau was approved for Fedora. This is a library which:
 - only accelerates decoding patent-encumbered MPEG family video codecs.
   ALL software which uses that is in RPM Fusion, not Fedora, anyway.
 - has no actual Free Software implementations. It is ONLY implemented by
   proprietary drivers.
 So what does Fedora have to gain from this pseudo-Free library?
* in at least 2 occasions, so-called "Open Core" [1] crippleware has been
 not only approved for Fedora (which makes sense, as IMHO we should accept
 everything under a Free license and with no patent issues as a Fedora
 package), but advertised as a Fedora Feature, which I consider to be
 completely counterproductive, as it gives free press coverage to such
 crippleware and sends a message to companies that releasing some crippled
 shareware version under a Free Software license is enough to get your
 product advertised as Free or "Open Source" all over the planet. My
 complaints about giving free advertising to such crippleware have been
 entirely ignored.

[1] http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/10/16/open-core-shareware.html

       Kevin Kofler


Wait, I thought libvdpau had a VA-API backend? And I thought Fedora included a crippled version of mplayer in its repositories? Either way, it is true that VDPAU currently only works with MPEG formats, but nothing says that the library can't be modified to support other formats, does it?

If I'm wrong, then shouldn't it be RPM Fusion? 
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